Atmosphere lets pubs down by degrees

The reason for a falling uni bar trade is close to home, writes Dominic Knight.

From refugee children in detention to fictitious justifications for war, I readily accept that John Howard is responsible for most of the evils in this country. I wouldn't even bat an eyelid if it turned out that he once gave Harold Holt lead flippers. But to hold him responsible for the decline of our university bars (Herald website, December 22) is going too far. Like the arts students who frequent them, the argument does not wash.

In fact, the Government has done its best to help campus boozers. At one point, the University of Wollongong was so cash-strapped it couldn't afford to fail anyone, giving its postgraduate students the opportunity to spend their entire degrees intoxicated. And the Prime Minister has stuffed our universities full of full-fee-paying students who are only too happy to use papa's gold Amex to shout the whole bar a round so the HECS students won't ostracise them.

The bar managers at Melbourne and Sydney unis complain that HECS increases have left students too poor to blow money on alcohol. What nonsense. As any American college movie will tell you, even students with $100,000 loans forget their debts whenever a keg's produced. (And, as anyone who's tried Budweiser knows, American beer isn't even good.) Our own students have never been able to sensibly save their pennies when subsidised VB is on offer.

The HECS increases won't be felt while students carouse their way through university, but when the loans take effect - that is, when young graduates want to buy their first homes and start families. The changes will prevent university leavers spending their money on far more worthwhile things than alcohol.

Sydney University's Tom O'Sullivan is right to say that students used to love Manning Bar back in the 1990s. Our English 101 lectures invariably featured a mass exodus at 11.25am, as half the class walked out to queue for first drinks at 11.30. And while the bar was a firetrap that stank of stale beer, and every step on the faded carpet squelched, the place undeniably had atmosphere. There was simply nowhere better to while away an afternoon you should have spent at a tutorial.

I knew O'Sullivan when I was at uni and he was a man of good sense. So I'm not surprised that he didn't bother to talk up the union's other licensed premises, Wentworth Bar, which has all the warmth of a funeral home designed by Harry Seidler. Most students discovered it while the main bar was being renovated. They didn't make the same mistake twice.

But the renovations gave Manning Bar those uncomfortable stainless steel stools that every other pub in Sydney had already abandoned and introduced a colour scheme that Star City would have deemed too tacky. Whereas once the younger patrons ran for the exits clutching their guts because a randy PhD student had bought them one Sub Zero too many, nowadays it's because they've caught a glimpse of the hideous multicoloured carpet. Today, Manning Bar feels like it desperately wants to belong in Surry Hills but has fallen foul of the door policy.

Melbourne University's bar manager had similar complaints. While I haven't visited recently, it's hard to feel much sympathy for someone who has named their bar In U. Of course the students aren't inviting one another to spend an evening In U - it sounds downright seedy.

Sydney's other inner-city campuses haven't fared much better. The UNSW Union has tried valiantly, but no makeover can disguise the horror that is the Roundhouse. And UTS's uni bars can be judged by the fact that the privately run Clare Hotel opposite has become wildly popular with its students. It's not hard to see why, if you can fight your way past all the students spending the money the uni publicans think they don't have. It's an unpretentious, comfortable retro pub, with not a hint of stainless steel. And, unlike most uni bars these days, it hasn't been taken over by the marketing departments of Red Bull and Bacardi Breezer.

I fear that anyone who thinks that the way to win students back is to introduce a marketing plan isn't going to understand why they left in the first place. But the truth is that Australian university students still like drinking in good bars as much as student unions like to hire bad architects. To adapt the wise words once spoken to Kevin Costner: if you build it, and it's got more atmosphere than the departure lounge at Sydney Airport, they will come.